Retrospectacle: A Neuroscience Blog » Aaron Rowehttp://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle
Just another siteSun, 02 Mar 2008 15:40:48 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3The Dramatic Effects of PCPhttp://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/24/share-your-favorite-angel-dust/
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/24/share-your-favorite-angel-dust/#commentsWed, 24 Oct 2007 03:23:06 +0000http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/24/share-your-favorite-angel-dust/I have heard a lot of stories about the aggressive behavior of people on angel dust, but this video is the first time that I have seen just how dramatic it can be. The guy is completely naked and smashes straight through a fence then tries to climb through the hole in order to evade police. It seems almost like the behavior of a comic book villain or the incredible hulk.

]]>http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/24/share-your-favorite-angel-dust/feed/7The Dark History of Truth Serumhttp://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/23/the-dark-history-of-truth-seru/
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/23/the-dark-history-of-truth-seru/#commentsTue, 23 Oct 2007 00:38:51 +0000http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/23/the-dark-history-of-truth-seru/
As our civil liberties are eroded under the guise a war on terror and men without rights are kept in secret prisons and sent to foreign jails for abuse, I worry that truth serums will once again become a staple of law enforcement and intelligence. They do not allow interrogators to extract reliable information, but neither does torture — and yet the current administration is not opposed to those brutal methods.

It began with the so-called “zombie drug” scopolamine. In the 1920s, Robert House, a doctor from Texas, branded the versatile alkaloid as a means to extract information. In the next decade, barbituates including sodium amytal and sodium pentothal were introduced.

It didn’t take long for reasonable people to realize that truth serum would produce inaccurate or inconsistent results during interrogations, and yet former CIA officials and Indian judicial officials take them seriously. Perhaps they read too many Dick Tracy comics as kids.

]]>http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/23/the-dark-history-of-truth-seru/feed/8Amazon Parrot Makes Smoke Detector Noise and Saves Familyhttp://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/22/amazon-parrot-makes-fire-alarm/
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/22/amazon-parrot-makes-fire-alarm/#commentsMon, 22 Oct 2007 07:06:25 +0000http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/22/amazon-parrot-makes-fire-alarm/
According to the Indianapolis News a man and his son were awakened by their pet bird as their home caught fire. Their Amazon parrot, Peanut, began making a smoke detector noise while a real smoke detector was going off. The father credits his avian friend with making enough noise to alert him.

I tend to write off stories about animals saving people as wishful thinking on the part of reporters and pet lovers. But in this case, I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that a parrot is considerably louder than a fire alarm.

]]>http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/22/amazon-parrot-makes-fire-alarm/feed/11Video of British Soldiers on LSDhttp://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/21/video-of-british-soldiers-on-l/
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/21/video-of-british-soldiers-on-l/#commentsSun, 21 Oct 2007 20:25:46 +0000http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/21/video-of-british-soldiers-on-l/This video shows British Soldiers under the effects of LSD during a military exercise. I absolutely love the wry narration. Thank you to Boosterz for mentioning the video in a comment thread on the postHow Much LSD Does it Take to Kill an Elephant? While looking for this footage on YouTube, I was surprised to see just how many videos of people on acid are available to the general public. If you can suggest any particularly good ones, please let me know and I will embed them after the jump.

This video reveals some additional data from a NASA study of the effects that an assortment drugs have on spiders.

In case you want to know more, New Scientist has article on the original experiment in their archives.
]]>http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/21/video-of-british-soldiers-on-l/feed/10Brainiac Plays with Fire: Thermite versus Liquid Nitrogenhttp://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/20/brainiac-plays-with-fire-therm/
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/20/brainiac-plays-with-fire-therm/#commentsSat, 20 Oct 2007 19:56:59 +0000http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/20/brainiac-plays-with-fire-therm/In comparison to other science shows, Brainiac is quite effective at appealing to the visceral compulsion to play with fire. In this case, they pitted scorching hot thermite against molten metal. What could be better than a battle between two of the most enjoyable science demonstration tools of all time?

Thermite is a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum. When ignited, the aluminum is oxidized and the iron oxide is reduced. If you put it in a terracotta flower pot with a sheet of metal covering the hole at the bottom, the thin strip will melt just as the reaction has completed and allow a column of molten iron to pour straight downward.

Don’t forget to vote for Shelley!Or she will pour molten iron on your liquid nitrogen.

Just in case that wasn’t enough for you, here is a video of the Brainiac cast playing with alkali metals — which react violently with water. Am I alone in thinking that wacky science experiments are more fun when narrated with a British accent?

When alkali metals react with water, the products are a metal hydroxide, hydrogen gas, and lots of heat. As this video shows, metals at the bottom of the periodic table react far more violently than those at the top. Every high school science student should see this.

]]>http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/20/brainiac-plays-with-fire-therm/feed/8Five Ways Your Mind Plays Tricks on Youhttp://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/19/five-ways-your-mind-plays-tric/
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/19/five-ways-your-mind-plays-tric/#commentsFri, 19 Oct 2007 00:01:00 +0000http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/19/five-ways-your-mind-plays-tric/The October issue of Popular Science has several excellent articles about the mind. My favorite is a collection of five explanations of unusual or creepy sensations that are caused by neurological glitches.

Reporter Veronique Greenwood included short summaries of academic research about each of the mental malfunctions. I was pleased to see that she included the names and affiliatons of the researchers, but disappointed that she only identified one of the journals in which the research that she described appears.

After reading dense blurbs like these, I often want to know more.

It always irritates me when huge publications like PopSci go to great lengths to create a fantastic story, and then slap it up on the web without adding any extra information. They could have at least linked to the webpages of each researcher and some of their abstracts. That would have taken a half hour and greatly enriched the article.

For your enjoyment, here are profiles of those five researchers:
Note that you can find long lists of their scholarly publications on each of these pages.

]]>http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/19/five-ways-your-mind-plays-tric/feed/4Experiences with a Cochlear Implanthttp://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/18/experiences-with-a-cochlear-im/
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/18/experiences-with-a-cochlear-im/#commentsThu, 18 Oct 2007 01:49:48 +0000http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/18/experiences-with-a-cochlear-im/
Since losing his hearing, Michael Chorost has volunteered himself as a guinea-pig for a number of experiments with the software that controls his cochlear implant. He has written extensively about those experiences.

This week, I stumbled upon one of his stories in The Best American Science Writing 2006 and thoroughly enjoyed it. My Bionic Quest for Bolero tells the tale of his quest to hear every nuance of his favorite song by traveling across the country and allowing a host of scientists to tweak the settings of his digital ear. I was fascinated to learn that researchers were able to squeeze so much extra performance out of the medical device without any upgrades to the implanted hardware.

Don’t forget to vote for Shelley!Her research may someday make electronic implants obsolete.

]]>http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/18/experiences-with-a-cochlear-im/feed/3Are Your Drugs Right-Handed?http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/18/are-your-drugs-righthanded/
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/18/are-your-drugs-righthanded/#commentsThu, 18 Oct 2007 00:39:30 +0000http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/10/18/are-your-drugs-righthanded/
In recent years, pharmacutical companies have re-released several of their blockbuster drugs with a new twist. By carefully controlling the spatial arrangement of each atom in the active ingredient, chemists can increase the effectiveness of medications and sometimes prevent unwanted or horrible side effects.

Modafinil (provigil) is a treatment for narcolepsy. It also allows healthy people to stay awake for extended periods of time. Armodafinil (neuvigil) is a newer product that contains only one isomer of the drug.

Methylphenidate (ritalin) is a treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. More recently, Novartis has introduced dexmethylphenidate (focalin) which contains only a single isomer of the active molecule.

This is a bit heavy: Stereoisomers are molecules that have the same chemical formula and bonds, but a different arrangement of atoms. Enantiomers are a type of stereoisomer that are mirror images of each other — just like a right hand is the mirror image of a left hand. R-stereoisomers can be thought of as “right handed” and L-stereoisomers can be thought of as “left handed”.

In both cases, the generic names of the new drugs say something about their stereochemistry. Armodafinil sounds like R-modafinil, and in fact, it is the R-stereoisomer of the powerful stimulant. The prefix dex- in dexmethylphenidate indicates that when polarized light is shined through a solution of the substance, the polarization will rotate a bit in a clockwise direction.

Eszopiclone (Lunesta), Escitalopram (Lexapro), and Dexedrine are also pure enantiomers. Clearly, our brains are very picky about the shape of their drugs.

This past Saturday, dozens of computer programmers descended upon a mansion in Cupertino, California to enjoy massive troughs of Indian food, camaraderie, and 12 hours of working on a diverse array of projects alongside one another.

I visited the event, called SuperHappyDevHouse 20, as an observer. It made me wonder: What if all scientists worked this way?

Granted, it would be immensely difficult, and possibly dangerous, for a hundred chemists or biologists to bring all of their instruments to a suburban home and set up shop for the weekend. All scientists have conferences that they can attend. But I think that there is a point to be made here.

Coders are accustomed to communicating with each other must faster than their laboratory-bound counterparts. Some Google employees told me how they are barraged each day with a phalanx of email. Countless message boards, IRC channels, and other sites allow isolated programmers to share with each other. And then we have this: a gathering with lightning talks and guys squeezed ten to a folding table sharing ideas as quickly as they can speak. Perhaps this allows their culture and projects to evolve more quickly as well.

By comparison, there are few chemistry message boards, and only the open access journals like chemistry central include a comments thread alongside every peer-reviewed research paper, and conferences are dry, twice-a-year poster and powerpoint affairs.
It makes perfect sense that information technology for laboratory scientists would lag behind that which is at the disposal of career programmers, because the coders can make their own. But despite that understanding, I want more. I want lightning talks, and hack days, and zillions of active boards for biologists and chemists and physicists.

Instead, I have absolutely no idea what goes on in the labs on either side of mine. I know what topics my neighbors are studying, but I don’t see the nitty gritty details. Concrete walls separate us.

Increasing the rate at which laboratory science evolves is a challenge for architects. Would researchers work more effectively in cavernous labs that allow them to interact more fluidly with hundreds rather than a handful of other scientists? Could a business profit from renting out a venue where scientists temporarily set up camp to show each other the latest techniques? While it may be impractical, it would seem far more colorful than simply meeting in a convention center and watching slide shows.

Rare stories of organic chemists bringing insect pheromones or other oddities with them to conferences are the stuff of legend.

There is a small silver lining to this cloud. Websites like the Journal of Visualized Experiments have sprung up to share the minutia of what goes on in labs — allowing researchers from across the globe to reproduce complicated procedures with less difficulty. But still, there is something to be said for being there.